Gone A-Whaling by Jim Murphy

Author:Jim Murphy [Murphy, Jim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

While attacks by the inhabitan ts of Pacific islands were rare, the reporting and illustrating of them was frequent and usually very lurid.

Like most Americans in the nineteenth century, William could not understand why these people had not built brick or wood houses, why they did not wear western-style clothes, or why they weren’t hustling off to work every day. And why hadn’t they taken their abundant natural resources and turned them into successful, profit-making businesses? Such failures, for that is how they were viewed, were considered a sure sign of moral weakness and mental inferiority.

His attitudes, of course, flowed directly from those around him, those of his parents, fellow crew members, ministers—in short, anyone who spoke with authority. The Reverend J. G. Wood, for example, stated emphatically in his discussion of human beings that the Caucasian race is “considered the most beautiful specimen of the human form. From this race all ancient and modern civilized nations are descended and they have always been distinguished for superior intellectual and moral qualities.” Reverend Wood then went on to find inferior every other ethnic group in the world. In describing the islanders encountered by whaling men, he even managed to condemn two groups of people in one sentence. They are, he stated, “as crafty and fierce on the waters as the American Indians in their woods.”

Such racist statements went unchallenged for the most part back then, so the majority of boys rarely questioned their validity. These beliefs clouded their view of everyone they considered “different.” William Fish Williams was a remarkably kind-spirited boy, and genuinely liked most of the native people he met. Still, he wasn’t able to express a compliment without revealing his own prejudices. “The Kanakas were a good-natured, likeable people for all of their weaknesses.”

Eventually, the gam or shore leave would end, and a boy would find himself on board again looking at the same faces, reading the same books and letters. The only thing left for the sailors to do was talk. And they talked a lot! “It doesn’t cost a penny to talk,” a young sailor named Gerald wrote home, “so there are always two or more of the men in earnest discussion on some topic, serious and silly When no one is inclined to talk, then Isaac is willing to carry on a perfectly civilized discussion with himself.”

Sailors discussed whales and whaling every day. They talked about the sizes of whales and which kind contained the most oil. They compared the habits and personalities of various whales, told tales about the meanest one they had ever encountered, speculated on the origins of the mysterious substance ambergris, argued about the best hunting grounds or how long a whale could stay underwater. Even the tiniest detail about whales or hunting them—such as the best shape for a harpoon iron—could be cause for a lengthy and heated debate.

Many of the “facts” cited in these discussions were the product of guess-work and imagination, but delivered with the passion and authority of an expert.

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